Lord of the ring

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, June 21, 2006

DANBURY - He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head - a young prince sitting in a cushioned throne, his kingdom now in his grasp.

On May 26 in the warm winds of El Paso, Texas, Danbury's
Delvin Rodriguez
pounded
Luis Hernandez
to win the USBA Welterweight title on ESPN's Friday Night Fights - his first career belt.When Rodriguez stepped into the lobby of the Danbury War Memorial a few days later, an attendant behind the desk looked up at him. "You look smaller than you do on TV," he said.

Rodriguez shook his hand and smiled, then walked into an empty training room and sat down in a chair.

And sitting there in his short-sleeve T-shirt you could see Rodriguez's muscles, yet you wouldn't call him a muscular man, or a big man. The 26 year-old boxer is a graceful man; humble and polite with a soft voice and hands strong enough to hold onto his dream.

For Rodriguez, it's not that he doesn't know how good he is or how well he's done, but that he knows how much more he still has to do.

"Yeah, I'm excited I won the first belt," said Rodriguez as he traced his black goatee with his fingers. "But this is not where I want to stop, this is where I begin. Once I win the world title, then we can talk about laying back a bit."

Rodriguez is more than that in his home country - in the Dominican Republic, where his father lives. The 100 people that get together to watch his fights on television see his triumphs as more than stepping stones.

"When I get that world title, then I'll bring it," he said. "Then I'll let them know."

For the next few weeks Rodriguez will rest, returning to a six-week boxing boot camp in the Catskills in early July to prepare for a potential fight in August.

Possibilities include a fight at Foxwoods Casino and a match on HBO's Boxing After Dark series. Rodriguez and his team are aiming for a potential shot at the title next year.

"You're going to have days where you don't want to wake up," said Rodriguez of the training camps. "When you're in camp, you're locked away for six weeks. It's not easy. When you fight, travel around, that's the fun part. Right now there are a lot of good things that are about to happen. This fight opened a lot of doors."

That the world title is an appropriate destination for Rodriguez is thanks to "the new Delvin," as he calls it - the fighter he started to become three years ago.

It was then that the boxer with all that talent found the two wisemen who knew exactly what to do with it.

His manager
Stan Hoffman
(
James Toney
,
Hasim Rahman
formerly boxed for him) is 76-years-old and still can't quite get the hang of his cell-phone. But you get the feeling that he could pick a champion boxer with his eyes closed.

"He's our
Mona Lisa
," said Hoffman with a thunder bolt of enthusiasm. "We've got the paint and easel together, we've got the canvas on the easel; the flame is going; we're ready to start doing some strokes."

Their relationship began almost by accident. Hoffman needed a sparring partner for one of his other fighters, and Rodriguez - during a frustrated period with his current manager - walloped the sparring partner despite a moderate injury to one of his hands.

"I felt with one hand he was still doing incredibly," said Hoffman. "They had a release from the manager they were with, so we talked, and by the end of the conversation he said 'I'm ready if you are.'"

The two shook hands, but never signed an actual contract until months later.

"There was an explicit, honest-to-goodness affection, trust, and belief in each other," Hoffman said.

The other man, most literally in Rodriguez's corner, is his trainer
Lou Fusco
. Fusco - with whom Rodriguez has knocked out four of his last five opponents - won't tell you his own age, only that he's "a little older than dirt and not as old as water."

Fusco speaks with a poetic tone; he says things that seem much too romantic for a guy whose job is so violent. And when it comes to Rodriguez, he thinks the way Hoffman does: He'd already been handed a masterpiece.

"It's not even like work with him," Fusco said. "The way I like to compare it is, say I hear you're a nice artist and I ask you to make me a painting. But when you opened the box to do it, all there was is a pencil. With this kid, when you open the box all the oils and the brushes and the colors were already there. You just had to get them out in the right order. We're going to have a champion."

It's rare that Rodriguez gets through a sentence without mentioning either Fusco or Hoffman; how vital they've been and how thankful he is to have them.

"When you have a good team like I have now - a great manager, great trainer - everything is done professionally. Your whole attitude changes. You can see that your career is going forward."In the quiet rooms of the War Memorial, Rodriguez wears a Yankees cap and a silver chain instead of his white trunks with red trim. But he's still the same man, even now that he can throw a title belt over his shoulder. Delvin Rodriguez has always been the man, no matter what he looks like on television, who wants to move forward.

"Delvin and I have been over this many times," said Fusco. "The USBA is a watering hole. It means nothing if we don't go on to win a world title. He fully understands that."